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History events at the IHR

War and independence in Spanish America : CANCELLED

25 March 2014, 16:30 - 18:30

Event Type:
Seminar

Speakers:

Anthony McFarlane (Warwick)

Description:

During the period from 1808 to 1826, the Spanish empire was convulsed by wars throughout its dominions in Iberia and the Americas. The conflicts began in Spain, where Napoleon’s invasion triggered a war of national resistance. The collapse of the Spanish monarchy provoked challenges to the colonial regime in virtually all of Spain’s American provinces, and demands for autonomy and independence led to political turbulence and violent confrontation on a transcontinental scale. During the two decades after 1808, Spanish America witnessed warfare on a scale not seen since the conquests three centuries earlier.War and Independence in Spanish America provides a unified account of war in Spanish America during the period after the collapse of the Spanish government in 1808, set in the context of Spain’s responses to inter-power rivalry during the eighteenth century. The author traces the courses and consequences of war, combining a broad narrative of the development and distribution of armed conflict with analysis of its characteristics and patterns. He maps the main arenas of war, traces the major campaigns by crucial battles between rebels and royalists, and places the military conflicts in the context of international political change. Readers will come away with an understanding of how war and military mobilization undermined Spain’s empire, why new patterns of violence affected Spanish American societies, and how military conflict and political violence acted as the catalysts for the formation of independent states.